Editorial: Christie wrong to tie tax cut to tax credit for the poor

Here is what the debate in Trenton Monday boils down to: Gov. Chris Christie wants to lock in a tax cut for 2013 now, and Democrats want to wait until December see if the governor’s wild predictions about revenue growth come true.

In either case, the tax cuts would start in 2013. So when the governor claims his plan would deliver the cuts sooner, he is playing politics. When he says the truck driver from Middlesex County should not have to wait, that is pure demagoguery.

The governor has been hopscotching the state, making this same pitch at town hall meetings for weeks, so forgive Democrats for being annoyed about having to schlep to Trenton for this predictable puffery. They apparently have better things to do than to act as props for the governor’s latest attempt to draw attention to his Republican bona fides the month before the party convention.

There was, sadly, only one piece of substance in all this smoke. That is the weapon the governor is using as leverage to get his way: He is holding the working poor families of this state hostage by refusing to restore the tax credit he took away from them two years ago unless Democrats yield.

The credit is worth about $50 million a year, a pittance in a budget of nearly $32 billion. But for a single mom with a few kids and a job working as a cashier, the state credit is worth about $500 a year. Combined with a federal credit five times that large, it makes a meaningful difference.

And because it goes only to working families, it has a long pedigree of winning bipartisan support.
But Christie has been consistently awful to the working poor in this state, whether on housing, health care or income. And that makes this tactic particularly deplorable.

He will restore the credit, he says, only if Democrats agree to take the blind leap and commit to his larger tax cut now, before the revenue numbers come in. Be reckless, he says, or he will shoot the hostages.

For a governor who has achieved a great deal in his two years, this is a low moment.

Look first at the recklessness. His predictions for revenue growth are the most optimistic in the nation, despite the fact the state economy is lagging behind other states. No one but his own obedient Department of Treasury believes this nonsense, including the nonpartisan Office of Legislative Services and the Wall Street bond rating agencies.

So why not wait and see? If the tax cut isn’t scheduled to take effect until 2013 anyway, what does that simple prudence cost?

Just one thing: It would deny Christie a political win in advance of the party convention in August.

Democrats won’t bite at this, as the governor knew before he gave this speech. They tried to restore the tax credit for the working poor, but Christie killed it with a line-item veto, which Republicans have the votes to sustain.

So in the end, that is the only news from Monday. Christie scores a few political points. And the working poor absorbed one more of his blows.